One Like Any Other
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1106b: As grueling as Cheerios practice had been, the worst was yet to come for Tina, when the coach summoned her. - Chang Squared series - Anniversary cycle day 14 of 21, shift B


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!_

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_**THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: **It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!_

_**This story** is a POV Swap to Broken Down & Out, a Chang Squared series story, originally posted on February 23 2012._

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_**This is a double shift day.** There will be one more upload today: Putting the Pieces Together._

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**"One Like Any Other"  
15yo Tina/Mike  
Chang Squared series extra  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
**

Practice had been brutal. 'She's in one of those moods,' one of the girls had commented, to which Santana had returned 'when is she not?' They weren't wrong though, either of them. For someone who was usually right up there in moods, even Sue Sylvester could reach new heights, and on that day there was definitely something more for them to be spooked over. Now that the practice was over though, they could move on with their days, until the next practice, and then…

"Tina, my office!" the Coach came in, barking, and everyone froze. Tina hadn't kept her waiting, closing her locker and following her back into the gym. She had her clipboard along, as she always did, and Tina would remember her finger clicking along on the edge of it the whole time she spoke.

She'd kept it brief, to the point, and it had knocked the wind right out of her. Hearing the words 'you're off the Cheerios, turn in your uniform as soon as you can change out of it' could not have been any clearer, and still she had stood there in utter confusion. She knew, as much as she would have tried to, there was no arguing with the woman. She had returned to the locker room, trembling with a bit of shock and, when some of the girls had asked what had happened, she told them.

It was Jenny who had smirked and told her that 'she did that,' and how she would pick Cheerios at random, just kick them off because she felt like it. Tina couldn't believe that this would be the case, especially for her, and when Jenny had laughed, she'd just sort of snapped, yelling a few choice words she had kept to herself until then. That had caused a chain reaction of raised voices, but by then she had fallen back into her own head, her own world, and there was only one thing on her mind: the coach wanted her uniform back, well then she would give it to her, couldn't wait to get out of it. She yanked the elastic from her hair, letting the ponytail loosen, already feeling liberated from that action. She got her locker open, started pulling things out. She heard someone at her shoulder, though she didn't pay attention to the words.

"Let me do this!" she told them, continuing until she had her regular gym clothes, and she started stripping off the Cheerios uniform, down to the sneakers. She put on the gym clothes, her other sneakers, and then gathered everything into two bags, one for herself, and the other for the coach, the uniform. She didn't bother looking to any of the others who might have been around, just walked out of the locker room and… "Mike…" she paused when she saw him standing out in the hall.

"What's going on?" he asked, and when he did, when she found herself having to tell him, the frenzy which had taken her over suddenly just fell away, leaving her with sadness.

"She kicked me out…" she still couldn't believe it.

"What? From the Cheerios?" She nodded in confirmation, and that was the moment she broke down and started to cry. A moment later he had his arms around her and she let the bags go so she could hold on to him instead. "But… did she say why?" he asked, and it made her heart ache.

"Apparently she does that, looks at the list and randomly picks someone off. Guess I wasn't valuable enough to be spared that…"

"You're pretty valuable… solid gold," Mike told her, and the words, along with the feeling of his hands rubbing at her back, kept her getting calmer, letting out her rage from earlier.

"I didn't even have anything else to put on except my gym clothes," she revealed. "She wants the uniform back, not supposed to wear it anymore…"

"I'll take you home to change," he offered, and she shook her head, blinking.

"No, but we've got class…" she didn't want him getting in trouble for her sake.

"It's one period and then we have lunch, it's fine," he insisted, and she guessed he was right. "Besides, I should probably clear out of here for a bit," he went on, and she frowned.

"Why?" she asked.

"They might think I'm a peeping Tom," he told her, and she didn't know what to make of that.

"What?"

"I'll explain in the car," he told her, and she went along with it. Before they could go, she had to take her uniform to the coach, and she said nothing, dropping the bag on the chair before her desk. At the coach's request for her to return her other Cheerios items, Tina had kept her tongue but nodded before leaving with Mike. During the drive, he had told her about the incident in the locker room, but after that she wasn't in a talking mood, and so silence took over. They got to her house and, staring into her closet, she blanked out, shaking her head.

"I haven't chosen what to wear to school in so long," she admitted. "Kind of got used to putting on the same thing." There was no point putting too much thought into it, all she wanted was to put on something other than her gym clothes and get back to finish her day at school. She pulled a dress, then turned to look at Mike. As helpful and kind as he was being to her in that moment, she wasn't ready for him to see her without clothes on. When he understood this and turned away, she started to change… again.

"It's going to be okay," he told her. "I mean… I'm not on the football team anymore, and you're not a Cheerio anymore… We'll have more time together."

"I know…" she breathed out, trying to take in the positivity he was sending her. "And that's good," she promised.

"But…" She stood there a moment before reaching to fasten up her dress.

"I didn't want to be off the Cheerios, there was nothing…" she stood there for a while. She'd almost said 'nothing wrong with me,' and she thought it might hurt him or something, recalling his injury, which had led him to opt not to return to football.

"What are you going to do?" he simply asked.

"I… I don't know," she had to admit.

"What do you want to do?" he continued, and as it had been the question brewing unanswered in her mind for the last hour, it knocked her hard.

"I don't know!" she hadn't expected her voice to get so loud, and she shrank back, even if he couldn't see her. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"It's okay, I… Are you still getting dressed?" he asked, and she looked down, realizing she had finished with her dress and just forgotten to tell him he could turn.

"No, I'm done," she told him, so he turned. She bowed her head, feeling herself bumming out all over again. When she felt him approach though, she turned her eyes back to him.

"Look, Coach Sylvester, she's not exactly known to be fair. She kicked you out, you said so yourself, randomly." She knew it was him trying to make her feel better, but really he was spelling out her whole problem with the situation.

"How is that better? Nothing I did mattered enough for her to look at me as just one interchangeable pawn in her set of ponytails! I don't matter to her, nothing I did…" It felt like her lungs had stopped working, and she was freaking out, but then he hugged her.

"She doesn't know a thing, okay? I saw you, we all did," he promised. "And maybe at first I didn't picture you as a Cheerio, but as soon as I saw you out there…" he sounded so hopeful, and loving, she had to see into his eyes, like maybe he was all she needed to feel better. "You were right where you belonged." He would be the one to get her smiling again, of course. "This can be a good thing," he assured her, and she knew he was right.

"I know… Just doesn't feel like it right now," she lowered her head, breathing deep. "I guess I should finish getting ready," she caught sight of her bare feet. She thought of her sneakers, her perfectly white ones she'd had to return to the coach, and she remembered she'd have to return… everything. "Can you do something?" she ended up asking.

"Name it."

"Still got some other Cheerio clothes and all that. She wants them, too…" she explained.

"I'll take care of those."

It was all he needed to know, just one more thing for her to love about him. With that taken care of, she could finish getting dressed. She did her best to make sure she wouldn't show up all mismatched at school, even if she couldn't really bothered at this point. The last thing she did before her makeup was to brush out her hair, the one good thing in this… no more ponytail pulling her hair so tight… She thought about putting highlights from time to time, any color, but naturally this was out of the question for Coach Sylvester, so… Maybe some blue would be good…

"Pretty sure I got all of it," she looked up at the sound of his voice, having now finished with her makeup. She looked to him, seeing the bag he held… it was done. She wasn't going to crumble again, and she smiled at him to show just that.

"How do I look?" she asked. He came up to her and she went on smiling.

"You can ask me that question a million times, you'll always get 'beautiful' from me," he told her, and she couldn't help but kiss him.

"Sounds good," she breathed in. "Then we better get going," she picked up the bag. "Brand new day," she declared. She knew it would come bugging her again later, but for now… She had to keep going.

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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